Kingdom Hearts: Threads of Change
by TheWingedOne
Summary: -"There's a connection between everything, whether held together by a chain or a strand of thread." Roxas-centre, post KHII. "Boy, you are forming your own being." "I want to remember what's missing. It's like it's behind a wall that no one has climbed."-
1. My Own Being

**Oh look, another story. The chapters are shorter because I'm not trying to make them long, but good. I'll write at least a thousand words a chapter, so don't worry...  
**

**This one is post KHII, which means after the second game. I didn't intend to change anything from before the end. This is after King Mickey's letter was found at the end.**

**There will be Roxas (duh). There will be Axel. There will be Namine. There will be Xion. There will be adventure, possibly deaths, return of passed characters, romance and multiple pairings for the same person (though there'll be one focused pairing for each that I won't tell you), unexpected twists, humor, new original worlds, and overgrown spirit birdies that speak English (for an important reason that you will learn), and hold secrets from all. With the sugar, spice and everything nice will also come the essence of dark, the throaty tang of evil, and... I'm rambling and making no sense because I want to intrigue you, if you're even reading this at all.  
**

** Enjoy.**

* * *

_Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone._ -Thomas De Quincey

* * *

How long had he been here?

A boy of fifteen, watching through his memories out from the ledge of Twilight Town's clock tower. With ocean blue eyes and messy blond hair, he watched as a raven tried to sing.

This wasn't a memory, he knew. If it was, Twilight Town wouldn't have snow, gently tickling, raining down silently on the civilization. It was somewhere around five thirty in the morning, for this world, he saw. No kids were out, and the town held no noise.

Except for that annoying raven. If he had the ability to touch his surroundings, he would have thrown a snowball at the throaty singer. But he had simply come here during Sora's sleep, just to see the sights from the clock tower once more.

The sun was just beginning to rise. Light trickled across the place, as if through cracks, and everything that could sparkle sparkled, but in a soft and beautiful way- the trains' tracks, his nonexistent boots, the tightly closed windows of the townspeople.

The raven 'sang' on.

Roxas sighed, though no one could hear it. He was not truly there, although he could feel the cold, trying to bite his face under his hood, and the sincere whistling of the occasional breeze, flying about his ears.

Then the raven stopped.

The cloaked boy sighed heavily in relief. The raven brought its ebony head in his general direction with a tilted head, inquisitive and strange blue-silver eyes questioning him.

First, he blinked. Were ravens.. supposed to have eyes like that? But, there were so many things in this world that he did not know that he decided to let it go. He didn't need to add to the list.

The raven cawed quietly, and spread its wings. Bigger than the average raven, it leaped from the roof it was on and flew directly at the boy.

Roxas braced himself instinctively, bringing his arms up and shutting his eyes, even though the raven couldn't see him, nor touch him. But he heard nothing until a small gust of wind flew at him, and the sound of faltering wingbeats filled the air.

He brought his arms into his lap and looked for where the raven went. It was next to him, wings folded neatly against its sides, looking up at him curiously.

Could it... see him?

He kept his eyes on the bird, slowly leaning forward. The raven leaned forward a bit with him, eyes locked on his hidden face. He snapped back into an upright position, and so did the raven. Then he relaxed, and so did the feathered being.

Its beak parted slightly, moving unrealistically into a smile, and its body shook a bit, with the raven still looking at the boy, and a pleasant sound like laughter filled the air around it.

Roxas was startled. Even if he wasn't a bird expert, he knew well enough that ravens did not- and could not- laugh.

But the raven laughed anyways, short and blunt as it was. It looked away into the darkness when it stopped its laughter, as if shy of the boy, into where the sunset usually was. But it was now sunrise, not the declining of the sun.

"Hi." It was more of a question than a greeting, but that was more of an accident.

The raven laughed again, and Roxas felt his heart warm. Rather, he felt Sora's heart warm. Was Sora watching him? Even so, he knew that Sora couldn't remember this when he woke up in the morning of his world. It was about midnight back on Destiny Islands.

"How can you see me?" Roxas blurted. "Can you touch me?" All at once, he felt stupidity closing in on him. It was a raven! It would probably just fly away from him now.

But it didn't. The raven laughed once more, and held out a great wing. Slowly it moved the wing toward the boy, and he felt warm feathers brush against his coat.

_"I am warm," _the raven laughed. _"I did not expect another spirit to come here."_

Roxas's eyes went wide, and his breath caught in his throat. He felt dizzy, as if he were about to fall off the clock tower. The raven just... spoke! Spoke! Or did it? Was this a trick, a dream? The raven's beak did not move once.

_"Are you a new spirit?"_ The raven tilted its head at him, both wings against its sides once again. _"Alas, I did not expect such a shocked reaction. Most spirits can speak English, mind you. English was the language I alone was born with."_ It sighed softly. _"Back when I was human."_

The voice seemed to come from the raven and from inside Roxas's head at the same time. "You... speak," he muttered, dumbfounded.

_"Telepathy, silly,"_ it said laughingly, _"But I see you didn't know that. Your chain of worlds is different from mine." _Its head faced the place where the sunset would be once again, and Roxas identified the voice as female. _"My name is Xani, and I travel the worlds with my friends. Friends you will most likely not meet. Young spirit, may I ask where you originate?"_

"I'm not a spirit," Roxas stated bluntly. The snow around him felt burning and freezing at the same time. "Is this a dream?"

_"Yes and no, you are but a vision here. I see you because I am a spirit, and you possess spiritual power. I see now that you aren't a spirit." _The raven looked at him with questioning eyes. _"What are you?"_

"A nobody," Roxas stated. The term _nobody_ now echoed through his head as something disdainful, something unliked and unneeded.

_"A nobody,"_ Xani repeated. _"Nobodies are said not to exist, but there is more to them being there than one may think. If you are a nobody, why do you feel? Why do you have a heart?"_

"I'm with-"

_"No, I already see that you are with your somebody... I refrain from looking in your mind to see who." _She shook her head. _"Boy, you are forming your own being."_

Roxas opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but then the raven's eyes grew wide. Xani called out loudly and beat her wings, jumping off from the clock tower's ledge, flying away. The boy's world turned black.

Sora had woken up.

* * *

**Yes, Xani is my OC. A spirit raven. That reads minds.**

**....she's supposed to be in one of my original books, kay? Which is chock-full of stuff. She's not going to take much part in the story, after chapter two. Though she might show up later. Please give me your opinion on her and whether I should mention her later on or not, after chapter three (I've already written three chapters and she only makes a cameo on the third).**

**I have a lot of plans for this story... if I decide to get off my lazy butt and finish it.**


	2. Untold Secrets

**Expect lots of cliffhangers. Xani may or may not appear more than planned.**

**Solate. I need to get on here more...  
**

**

* * *

**_You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. - H. R. Haldeman_**  
**

* * *

Roxas was devastated. He wanted to know what the raven had meant, but apparently she had flown away when he had disappeared. The bird had said that it was a traveler. It could mean that she would be long gone by the time Sora fell asleep the next day.

_You are forming your own being._

What was that?

He climbed to Sora's subconscious and started scratching at his mind. _Go back to sleep._

It didn't really help; Sora just began tossing and turning from the discomfort of someone itching at his brain. Roxas stopped with a sigh and leaned back. He just had to wait for Sora to fall asleep on his own.

Hours passed, and Roxas fidgeted from the wait. It seemed like Sora would never fall asleep again. But, alas, at five in the morning of Destiny Islands the spiky-haired brunette finally gave in to sleep.

Roxas jumped up onto his feet. He blinked a few times, and slowly the image of the Station of Awakening morphed into Twilight Town's Station Plaza. A familiar clock tower looked over him.

He flinched as a child clad in a winter outfit ran straight through him, apparently catching up to her other friends. Roxas sighed at the thought. He wouldn't be having friends of his own other than Namine- and not just Sora's- anytime soon.

He looked up at the clock tower. A portal was summoned behind him, and he stepped through it, instantly arriving at the top of the tower, where the portal closed. He walked over to the place where he used to sit in the summer, with his friend.

Or was it friend_s_?

Roxas shook his head. Where did that come from?

A call rang through the air, and a raven flew at him. But the bird didn't crash into him; it swiveled seconds from impact and landed in the same spot it had once been in before.

_"I was waiting for you,"_ the raven said gravely. _"And getting awfully tired in the process. My friends are probably queasy about me right now. I don't want them looking for me."_

"Sorry, Sora woke up," Roxas blurted.

The raven's head snapped at his direction, and Xani's body went stiff. _"Sora, the keyblade bearer? That is your somebody?"_

Roxas, startled, muttered, "Yes..."

The black bird relaxed a bit, and looked out to where the sunset should be, once again. _"I didn't expect that. But here it is, and I must accept it. Roxas, I ask, can you summon a keyblade?"_

Roxas shook his head. "When I was separate from Sora, I could. In this form, no. I wouldn't be able to hold it anyways." His bad memory came back to him for a moment. "What did you mean by me forming my own being?"

She froze, then relaxed, then went to a petrified state again and shivered. The boy feared that the bird was losing her human-like intelligence, but her eyes re-focused and she turned her head to look at the spiky-haired blond. _"There are many things I cannot tell. Secrets scream from inside my heart, bang on the walls of it until those walls are wilted from the pressure. But I must keep them in, and I cannot speak to any about them, unless they are the other spirits. My leader would be furious, the calm soul he is. Even if I told my closest friends... who aren't spirits."_ She took a deep breath, and let out a bellowing sigh. Xani's eyes narrowed. _"I am rambling about my own troubles again. You will see what I mean. It'll happen, and you'll see. Maybe I can get permission to tell you some of these secrets. In time."_

Then she spread her wings suddenly, snapping them out, and Roxas's world blurred for a moment.

He opened his mouth to ask the spirit raven what she knew, opened it to pour out his questions, but the world flashed black once again as the bird flew off, secrets and all.

--

Sora jumped up from his sleep.

He moaned when he saw the time; it was six in the morning and it was Monday. He couldn't remember his dreams, once again, and he was dead tired. He didn't want to go to freaking school...

He buried his head in his pillow. It was going to be his sixteenth birthday on Friday. He hadn't changed his looks, really- just got a bit taller. His hair didn't get any lighter than the previous year...

Sora thrashed in his bed for the next hour or so until his alarm clock went off at 7:30AM. He rolled out of bed- literally- and fell on the floor, yawning and groaning.

"Don't make me kick you awake again!" his mother called. She and all the other islanders, not including Kairi and Riku, had forgotten him. When he returned a year ago, it was like he had always been there. No parties or overjoyed reunions for him, except for him doing the overjoyed part.

Anyways, Sora remembered the last time his mom kicked him awake. He scrambled to his feet and ran for his clothes, slipping on his school uniform.

Roxas, meanwhile, thought over the raven Xani's words in the Station of Awakening. As Sora nearly missed the bus, he spotted Kairi sitting down next to Riku. Sora plopped down next to her right before the bus started to drive to the school.

Roxas leaned back, disconnecting from Sora's sight and watching as the Station of Awakening appeared before him. He looked upon it. Before, there was Donald, Goofy, Riku, Kairi, and Sora. All were awake except for Sora. Now, as he studied it, it seemed different.

Sora was in his clothes from last year, his second journey. Holding the Kingdom Key, behind him were the faces of all that were stated. Sora was now awake, with a happy expression.

"Change," Roxas whispered. He didn't even realize he said it until the station disappeared under his feet.

The boy yelled out as he started to fall. But after a minute he realized that impact wasn't coming anytime soon. A strange sense of deja-vu came over him...

Then he remembered, Sora had done this once before, and so had he. But this time, he was falling through the darkness in his Organization coat...

Then he closed his eyes for a few moments. He opened them again, and he was watching the main island of Destiny Islands. He could even see Sora's nearly-missed bus, driving peacefully to school.


	3. A Clean Slate

**Uck. I'm failing at writing right now. I hate introductions; it'll get easier as the story goes along. Because I already have a thousand ideas for this story, but later on, and now I'm sincerely stuck.**

**I'm going to listen to Ven's and Aqua's themes, which make me want to bawl. The themes are getting sadder and sadder. Oh wait, now I'm listening to 'Aqua's Good Luck Charms'. BAAAAAWWWLLL. SAD. I need to play BBS. Then more things would make sense and I'd be able to chuck things in here related to it. Blergh. /end rant  
**

**

* * *

**

_Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood. Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart. _-Arnold H. Glasgow

* * *

He was falling from the sky.

It was horrifying.

He yelled and screamed and thrashed, hair whipping around his eyes and wind trying to force his eyes closed. He felt himself plunge into the ocean, but then the world seemed to turn for him, and he was falling through the sky once again.

A strange sense of peace threatened to constrict him if he didn't give in to it. The wind forced him down harder, screaming at him to stay still, to straighten his limbs so he could fall into the water better. Roxas's eyes closed shut, but he still thrashed, and fell through the sky like a crooked missile, eventually falling into the water.

It was now the third time he was falling through the sky, and Roxas understood. He took a deep breath, letting all of his questions and fears go- _What's happening? Why is this happening again? Is something going on? Why am I separate from Sora?_- and fell down, body relaxed as possible with the wind buffeting him. But the wind soon calmed, and it seemed like a dream as he fell- an eternal, never-ending dream of falling, forever...

The trance did not end as he plunged into the ocean. It was strangely warm, comforting, and it felt like he was floating down on a bed of feathers. He could breathe, and he took a deep breath of the water like fresh air.

Soon, he felt his body turning the right side up, and his feet carefully met glass. Light burst from under his feet, and the glass below took form, shape and color. Roxas watched silently as a hundred doves flew from where the station took shape.

Roxas looked under his feet. There was a new image for the station.

Below him, was... him.

It was Roxas, in an Organization coat, eyes closed and Oathkeeper set over the shoulder farthest from the viewer. The image of the boy was facing right, unlike Sora had before; he was facing left. Oblivion was set across his lap, and he was clutching it like it was the most important thing in the world. Tears glistened off the ebony weapon, and Oathkeeper glowed gold. He appeared to be asleep, and stumbling over backwards, where Sora had looked like he was just getting back to his feet after almost tripping in Roxas's home station.

Axel's body, eyes closed in a deep slumber, was engraved inside a protective oval. He looked like he would never wake up, and seemed to be leaning against a brick wall in the background, arms crossed and face bobbing down.

There was also Namine, looking on to a nonexistent sea. Her notepad and pencil lay at her feet, and she was facing away from the viewer, hands held behind her. You couldn't see her face, and only her light blond hair, but Roxas had a feeling that she had a distant expression. She seemed to be but a detail in the background to Roxas for a moment, then a big portion of it, and then his opinion about it continued to change.

An empty space caught Roxas's eyes. It had the figure of a human, but that was all he could tell. Whenever he looked at the space, his vision blurred, and a headache pounded at his mind, so he looked away.

"Roxas?"

The boy looked up in response. There was Namine, in her white sundress, and with a notepad and pencil positioned in front of her as if she were drawing just moments ago. She looked up at him curiously, and with a bit of worry as well. "What are you doing here?"

"I... don't know," Roxas murmured, looking down. "What about you?

"I was always here... this is the Station of Serenity..." She looked down.

There was silence between the two for a moment.

Then, "Why did the station floor change?"

Namine looked down in confusion, then gasped. "Oh..."

"Yes?" Roxas leaned forward.

"Well..." she sighed. "Something's happening here. But I don't know what. And it doesn't seem good. It seems that you're asleep, and so is... Axel."

Not paying attention to Namine's hesitation to saying his lost friend's name, Roxas questioned, "What's that blank spot?"

"Oh, that's..." Namine paused, and blinked, averting her head. "It gives me a headache to look at it."

"Same here," Roxas sighed.

"I can't say- who it is," Namine said after a moment.

Roxas wondered if she meant that it was a secret, or if she really didn't know. But he didn't press any farther. After about a minute of silence, he blurted, "What did Xani mean when it said that I'm forming my own being?"

Namine looked at him in surprise. "Who's Xani?"

"Xani is..." Roxas averted his eyes. "It's really hard to explain. I don't even understand what it, or she, is... really."

"Okay... but it... said that you're forming your own being?" Namine took a deep breath. "I was waiting for this to happen... I just didn't think it would be so... soon."

Roxas turned to her in surprise, listening intently...

--

Meanwhile, Sora went on flunking his math test.

He closed his eyes for a moment. That letter- King Mickey's letter, it said scarcely anything at all.

Strike that, it didn't say anything at all. It was completely blank, a clean slate.

His teacher's sharp voice split through his thoughts.

How he hated math.

--

Namine placed a hand against Roxas's chest. "They mean that you're making your own heart, soul, and body."

"What?!" Roxas flinched away, stumbling back and barely regaining his composure before falling.

Namine gave a hurt look for a moment, but then sighed. "A fragment of Sora's heart broke off and found its way into you. The same has been happening with me and Kairi for the past month. I didn't want to you hate me for it."

Roxas tilted his head playfully. "I wouldn't hate you if you broke the Land of the Dragons in half."

Namine smiled. "Thanks. Anyways, that fragment started growing with your help. You were doing it subconsciously, though. It bloomed, and turned into your heart, because Sora's heart was so strong that a fragment was able to do so. But your new heart- and mine- are fragile." She looked down, drawing a big red heart on her notepad, which seemed to never run out of paper. "We'll have to train them to make them stronger. Anyways, we aren't heartless, because we have hearts. But what makes our form, our body? From what you told me, if you were falling from the sky and into the ocean, then you would have to have a body to feel the water and wind.

"What I'm saying is, that with our somebodies' hearts, it made our hearts, which combined with our souls, and they're now working together to make bodies. Our bodies. We're no longer just whole with Sora and Kairi, or a simple part in the background- now we're becoming our own selves." Namine looked up at Roxas, eyes sparkling. "Which means that we can do anything we want, go where we want to go, and be ourselves, not part of others. You're becoming a Somebody, Roxas."


End file.
